Fairfax County General :
Fairfax Underground
Welcome to Fairfax Underground, a project site designed to improve communication among residents of Fairfax County, VA. Feel free to post anything Northern Virginia residents would find interesting.

The Fairfax County School Board has adopted the Fairfax County Public Schools 2013-14 school year (FY 2014) Approved Budget of $2.5 billion, which includes compensation increases for employees and funds the final phase-in of mandated employee contributions to the Virginia Retirement System (VRS). The FY 2014 budget includes nearly 300 additional positions to address membership growth-projected to be 184,625 in FY 2014, an increase of 3,089 students-and student demographic changes, and is a 1.1 percent increase over the FY 2013 Approved Budget.

The budget, which takes effect July 1, includes a 2 percent market scale adjustment for all employees, effective January 1, 2014, as well as a 3 percent mandated salary adjustment to offset a 3 percent increase in the VRS employee contribution rate for those impacted participants.

In a separate motion, the Board also directed the Superintendent to develop an FY 2015 Proposed Budget that includes compensation increases for employees, with step increases as the Board’s preference. By this motion, the School Board has committed to compensation increases for employees in FY 2015.

“This was an extremely challenging budget process,” said School Board Chair Ilryong Moon. “The Board was committed to providing a salary increase for employees, but meeting the needs of a growing number of new students combined with a lower than requested transfer increase from Fairfax County limited our options.” FCPS receives nearly 70 percent of its funding from Fairfax County; this year, the county transfer increased by 2 percent, bringing the total funding provided by the County to $1.7 billion.

The FY 2014 Approved Budget includes $21.7 million to address student membership growth and changes in student demographics, adds 5.0 school psychologist and 9.0 social worker positions, increases support for advanced academics and Young Scholars by $0.5 million, expands world languages to five additional elementary schools, expands FECEP (Family and Early Childhood Education Program) to serve more than 100 additional students using grant and Priority Schools Initiative funding, and increases funding for preventive maintenance by $1.6 million. Other adjustments include increases for homebound and multiagency services, adjustments for contractual increases, and savings from employee turnover, bus inspections, and utilities.

FCPS is receiving one-time state incentive funding of $6.3 million by providing the required 2 percent mid-year compensation increase to all employees. Excluding the incentive funding, state aid decreased by $3.3 million compared to FY 2013 while funding from sales tax receipts is projected to increase by $9.1 million.

Ninety-three percent of FCPS positions are school-based and 7 percent are non-school based. Among the 10 Washington, D.C., metropolitan area school systems participating in the Washington Area Boards of Education Guide, FCPS has the lowest percentage of leadership team and management positions at 0.7 percent.

This year, FCPS asked to participate in the State Efficiency Review Program, which will help identify potential savings and highlight the district’s best practices. A final report will be presented on June 10 to the School Board.

We need to pay the teachers more since they cannot afford to live in the county, at least in the part of the county they desire like McLean or Oakton. Or we could just have them switch to working three months and have nine months off instead of the current 3 months off in summer.

"Ninety-three percent of FCPS positions are school-based and 7 percent are non-school based. Among the 10 Washington, D.C., metropolitan area school systems participating in the Washington Area Boards of Education Guide, FCPS has the lowest percentage of leadership team and management positions at 0.7 percent."

This does not tell the whole story. Just because a position is "school based" does not mean the position is one where the person is directly responsible for student learning. A position can be made where a person sits at a school and is therefore called "school based". Everything depends on how you definitions of the words. This is not an apples to apples comparison across school systems.

Each position needs to be reviewed based on the job description. The SB needs to do heavy lifting here . . .

LOL over paid Babysitters? I should be getting paid $612,000 dollars year working my so called 180 hours a day with my 170 kids I so called babysit. My neighbor is a babysitters earns about $20 dollars Per kid per day. she babysits 5-6 kids at a time. I have about 170 kids a day and I earn 56k a year. With my babysitter aid I have about 300 something a kid to babysit.